A Titanic problem
by Senmut
Summary: You thought you knew what Nick was doing on the doomed ship? Think again.


Nicholas stopped, the lit cigarette smoldering forgotten between his fingers. There it was, again. Ever since coming aboard in Cherbourg, he'd felt as if he were being stalked. Followed. He stretched out with his feelings, searching the ethers for the tell-tale trace of another of his kind. After a few moments, he gave up. He felt nothing. Whatever it had been, it was gone, now.  
  
Relax, Nicholas, he told himself. You gave him the slip, back in Rouen. You are safe for the moment. Soon, you will meet the collector, and have the Abarrat. But was he? Was he really, ever, truly safe from the clutches of his Master.  
  
"Merde!" he hissed, as the cigarette burned down to his fingers, bringing him back to the here and now. He flung the offending object away, and looked out over the railing. He quickly found his thoughts absorbed in the dark water speeding by below him, and the stars punctuating the cosmic velvet. Stars. He could never look at them without thinking of his long- dead sister, Fleur. Ever the seeker after knowledge, she had absorbed everything she could possibly find about them.  
  
Ah, my little Flower, Nick mused, if only you could see them like this! If only you knew what we know, today. If only.  
  
If only you were here.  
  
So absorbed was Nick in his own thoughts, he would not have felt the other, even if he'd been paying attention. Some distance away, in the Marconi room, both operators sat, eyes glazed, as a tall, imposing, nay frightening figure perused the stacks of messages on the table. He smiled at some, laughed at others, and frowned scornfully at still others. At last seemingly finding what he wanted, he slipped several into his pocket, and left the room. The two operators slowly blinked, and came gradually to themselves.  
  
She was gorgeous, and obviously wealthy from her manner of dress. He'd seen her from time to time, after the ship had departed Cherbourg. In the First Class Dining Salon, the Library, even the pool. While she had beauty, always enough to make him look twice, she also had something else. After a while, he began to realize that she was watching him. The hunter had become, after a fashion, the hunted. It was as if.as if she knew what he was. True to his expectations, she came up to him a little after 10 P.M., like a lioness on the scent.  
  
Or a vampire.  
  
"Aren't you being a little irresponsible?" she began, boldly.  
  
"Excuse me?" he responded, taken a bit off guard by her rudeness.  
  
"Traveling in such high profile among mortals. The lion in our midst."  
  
LaCroix stood near the bridge, hidden in the shadows. As an officer passed him, he reached out, and took hold of him.  
  
"What."  
  
But the old vampire did not feed, merely looked hard into the yes of the trembling mortal. He spoke to the man, and planted a command into his numbed mind. Released, the officer continued on towards the bridge. Once there, unseen by the others, he turned the ship's wheel, ever so slightly altering her course. He did not, however, tell anyone.  
  
  
  
It was true, Nicholas decided as he fenced with her. She knew. Knew exactly what he was. For a moment he was at a loss what to do. LaCroix, of course, would have dispatched her at once and thought no more of it. Janette much the same. But he wasn't like that. Not merely was he on a ship full of potential witnesses, but he had foresworn killing. Never again. Never.  
  
All thought vanished when she slit her wrist, offering him a taste of her blood. The sight of it oozing along her arm, the scent of it, slammed into his brainstem, nearly driving rationality away. It had been years since he had tasted Human blood. Ohhh, she.  
  
High up above, looking down and watching them, LaCroix smiled.  
  
"Nicholas."  
  
Nicholas didn't remember making it to her cabin, or how he managed to make wild bestial love to her without harming her, but when they at last calmed down, she was quite unhurt. Then she began to talk, showing him the Black Buddha, and outlining what she knew of its history. It was quite a tale, he decided. He'd heard of it, of course, in his myriad researches, but had never given it a moment's thought the last few years, so consumed had he been tracking down all leads to the ancient Sanskrit text, the Abarrat. When she at last told him her greatest wish, he couldn't believe it.  
  
On the bridge, no one at first noted the tall, ominous figure that had entered. He surveyed the scene, smiling. Then, one of the officers turned and saw him.  
  
"Who are." He got no further, as LaCroix reached out with his power, and the lot of them stopped, blank-faced.  
  
"Well now, what have we here?" he said, putting one hand to the ship's wheel. "Hhmm. This is left. No, right. Oh, how complicated it all seems." He turned as a bell rang through the bridge. He picked up the telephone receiver.  
  
"Iceberg right ahead, sir!"  
  
One of the officers stirred, seeming to come out of his stupor, and LaCroix looked him right in the eyes.  
  
"I was never here."  
  
"Never.here."  
  
With that, the old vampire put the phone in his hand, and vanished from the bridge. The mortals awoke, slowly, to their peril.  
  
  
  
"I shall step off the Titanic immortal," she declared, followed at once by a lurching of the ship. Nick turned his head, and with his vampiric senses, could both feel and hear the hull being torn by something. Torn? But.  
  
Ice! They'd hit an iceberg. The grinding and tearing of the Titanic's steel was clear to him. The unthinkable had happened. Then it was gone, the only noise being the usual vibration of the ship's engines.  
  
Alarmed, he left her cabin, heading up onto the deck. People were milling around, most of them seemingly unconcerned. Then, the engines stopped. A few minutes later, he saw the Captain and another man run past, grim-faced. He didn't need the perceptions of a vampire to understand what they were feeling. With his hearing, he could hear the water pouring into the ship far below. With his speed, he dashed below decks, and had his fears confirmed. The wound in her hull was a fatal one. The R.M.S. Titanic was doomed.  
  
Panicking, Nick ran for the book dealer's cabin. The man was not there, nor was he in the smoking lounge, or the bar. In a near frenzy, he tore the fellow's cabin apart, looking for the Abarrat. The plan had been to meet with the fellow, examine the book to be certain it was the real article, then hand over a banker's draft for a million once they reached New York. But to hell with that idea. He had to have that book. He had to!  
  
Ripping open the portable safe, he at last found it. Stuffing it roughly into his suit, he dashed back for Gibson's cabin. She wasn't there. He found her up on the boat deck, watching the first boat being lowered. Convinced that she had brought this catastrophe upon the ship by her possession of the supposedly cursed Buddha, and begging Nick for the atonement of death, she offered him her neck, and he took it, draining her amidst the confusion. He plopped the body down on a bench, and moved aft.  
  
He could, he figured, just make it to land before dawn. He felt his pockets again. He had the Buddha in one, and the somewhat crumpled Abarrat in another. He.  
  
Then he felt it. Felt the blood knowledge from her. She had.the lying bitch! Then he felt him. No, it could not be! Please God, not.  
  
He ran back towards where he'd propped Gibson's body, and his heart sank. There, next to her, sat LaCroix, his bloody wrist to her mouth. As he watched, she was reviving. She stood up, looking at Nicholas, and smiled the smile of hell.  
  
"As promised, My Dear," said LaCroix. "You have your wish."  
  
A passenger on their way to the boats never made it. With the new swiftness of her nature, Gibson grabbed them, and dragged the kicking screaming victim through a doorway. First Feeding.  
  
"You bastard!" Nick spat at his Master. "You."  
  
"Of course I did, boy! Give it me!" He held out his hand. "Nicholas!"  
  
"Go to hell!" replied Nick, and moved to follow Gibson. LaCroix seized him, and with enormous strength, slammed him into a bulkhead. He slid to the deck, and LaCroix tore the Abarrat from his pocket. As the dazed Nicholas looked, LaCroix briefly perused the leaves.  
  
"Did you really think I'd let you have this, Nicholas? Did you really think I did not know?" Nick looked aft momentarily, and LaCroix smiled. "He's dead, Nicholas. Your greedy little bookseller was most uncooperative. He wouldn't tell me where it was, and I wasn't quick enough to get it from the safe ahead of you. However.." He belched theatrically. "I have it now." So said, he wadded the manuscript up, and hurled it down a vent. Nick lunged, but LaCroix struck him in the stomach, sending him flying into something hard, and then all was blackness.  
  
He awoke, the sky still full of stars, and tried to rise. He found himself on ice, LaCroix and Gibson next to him. A few hundred yard away, they could see the great Titanic, the most magnificent piece of technology man had yet achieved, sink lower and lower into the water. Fuming but unable to do aught, Nick watched as it went dark, then broke up, and slowly slid into oblivion. His heart ached as he heard, could not keep himself from hearing, the screams and moans of those in the water, unable to do anything for his fellow beings. Next to him, LaCroix smiled, as if it was all just another form of amusement in the arena to him. For her part, Gibson, as immune to the cold now as he, stood silent, saying nothing.  
  
"We must go," his Master said at last. It still seemed dark, though to a vampire, dawn's approach was already noticeable.  
  
"Where?" asked Nicholas, sarcastically. "We lost our ride."  
  
"Not to worry," said LaCroix, as off-handedly as if he were quoting the weather report. "I've secured another." He grabbed both of his children, and took to the air. Below, not seven miles from where the Titanic's survivors struggled, there was another vessel, stopped dead in the icefield. They landed on the deck, and looked around. "Welcome aboard the Californian," LaCroix smirked, as if he owned her. "Now, if you will excuse me, I must go and finish bending the minds of those aboard her." He turned back, and smiled at his son. "Don't go away."  
  
Alone with Gibson, Nick turned away from her. What a fool she'd played him for! All that guff about the Buddha, and how it could grant its owner a wish! How clever, how diabolically cunning LaCroix had been. All this, to distract him from his quest. And at what cost? Over half the people aboard the Titanic, gone to a watery grave or doomed to die in the freezing sea, all to keep him as he was.  
  
LaCroix was insane, he decided. Completely mad. To slaughter innocents on this scale, without regard for anything but his own selfish desires, was below even his usually depraved standards. One day, he thought. One day, he would rid the world of his Master, and then perhaps those who now lay at the bottom of the sea could rest a little easier in their watery tomb.  
  
He turned and cast a glance at Gibson. His hate burned white-hot in his chest, and he nearly gave in to his desire to kill her here and now and damn the risks, an easy task for one as old as he. But he forebore. Why he did not know. For her part, after a single look at him, she turned back towards the sea, cold and silent beneath the icy stars.  
  
And in his pocket, forgotten for the moment, sat the Buddha, biding its time. 


End file.
